The lawsuit alleges that the conspiracy in the animation industry dates back to 1986, when Lucasfilm Ltd and Pixar, now both part of Disney, agreed not to cold call each other's employees and not to outbid each other's pay offers, according to the complaint.

Other defendants entered into similar agreements with one another by the mid-2000s or even earlier, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit points to numerous emails from company executives referring to no-raid agreements. In one 2007 email, Pixar president Ed Catmull is quoted as saying that poaching each others' employees with higher pay offers "seriously messes up the pay structure."

The new lawsuit comes about a month after U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose refused to approve a proposed $324.5 million settlement in the broader tech industry suit, partly because she found recovery for the class members would be too low compared with the Disney settlement approved earlier. Defendants in that case, including Google Inc and Apple Inc, are appealing her ruling.

The case is Nitsch v. DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 5:14-cv-04062.